This is the blog of Norbert Wu, an underwater wildlife photographer and filmmaker, and a non-cutting-edge technologist

Saturday, January 14, 2017

VLC for Android as a Music Player -- How to Play Songs Continuously, Icons and Controls Explained

I converted a cheap Android phone to use as my music player, when swimming. I bought a waterproof pouch that allows me to use waterproof earbuds, and the combination is pretty great. I have pretty good control over the touch interface through the waterproof pouch. I taped a small square of packing padding over the inside front window of the pouch, which pulls the front of the pouch away from the touchscreen of the phone enough so water does not mess with the controls.

I use VLC on the Android to play my folders of mp3 files. I used to use an iPod Touch, but the battery life on the thing was terrible (while sitting, not while playing). I had perhaps four iPods, and all of them would die after sitting for two days. I tried copying all my music files and folders to another iPod, and it took a day of research and five hours to simply duplicate all my music from one iPod to another. I am done with iPods.

With my Android phone, I just copy my music folders and files to a micro-SD card, and that's pretty much it. Boom -- duplicate music library on another phone.

I chose VLC to play my music folders, since it could choose a folder on an SD card and play all the music files on a folder. Recently, I'd choose songs in a folder (not a playlist) and get stuck -- VLC would only play the one song, then stop. This was a hassle. I did some research and discovered that no one out there has fully explained the controls for VLC's audio interface, nor how to make all the songs in a physical folder play continuously.

The phone that I use for swimming has VLC version 1.7.5, an older version. I describe using VLC version x below.

VLC v1.7.5: How to Play All Songs in a Folder (Not a Playlist) Continuously, Without Stopping After Every Song.

I have my music mp3 files in folders on my computers, making it easy to put folders of music on CDs and SD cards. These are physically separated into folders, not organized into playlists on the phone -- which VLC can do.

To play all songs in a folder continuously, so every song plays one after another without stopping until the last song in the folder, do this:

Go to the folder level of the SD card. In my case, I open
VLC, then using the menu icon at the top left of VLC (three lines), I
choose sdcard (rather than Internal memory, since I've stored my mp3
files on an SD card). Then I choose the topmost folder, which contains
all the folders of mp3 files. I called this "Music SD card". Once in
that topmost folder, I see all my folders (usually albums). Choose
"Play" from the three dots to the right of the folder you wish to play.
Once you do this, the folder will open, and you can choose any song in
the folder to start playing. The songs listed in the folder will then
play in succession. If you just choose the folder of music files and then choose a song in that folder, without choosing Play at the upper level first, then the song you choose will only play once, then the music player will stop.

Now, if you press the bottom of the VLC player, you will bring up a small inset screen that allows you to scrub through the song while it is playing, pause, jump ahead to the next song, or go back. I've encountered these symbols and icons before, so I don't describe them.

There were a couple of icons that I've never seen and did not understand. Here's what they do.

Here's the folder of music files, with the song presently playing "opened" at the bottom:

You'll notice this icon, or symbol, at the right of the widget player:

What the heck does this do? I could not find an explanation anywhere. I searched for quite a while, and experimented with my phone. By pressing this icon, you can change the icon to black, and then the number "1" will appear inside the arrows, in black again.

Here's what I think this icon does. I believe that this icon controls playlists -- so this icon does not do much for me, since I don't use playlists. I'd rather just organize my music files physically, in folders on an SD card or computer. Regardless, here's what this does:

1. Orange means that this icon is turned off -- the playlist will not loop, or play itself over and over again.

2. Black means that loop is turned on -- the playlist will play over and over again, continuously.

3. Black loop symbol with 1 digit in it: plays a single file over and over, so you hear the same song that you selected over and over.

I experimented with this icon in the pool, without knowing the above, trying to get my folder of music to play all songs continuously. It took quite a while to figure out what the loop icon meant. I just selected one song in a folder, had it play -- so it was the only song in the playlist. Selecting the black loop, with or without the number 1 in it, meant that the same song played over and over again. See, the playlist only consisted of one song!

What do the two crossed arrows at the left mean?

If black, the next song in the playlist will play.
If orange, the music player stops after playing the current song.

Again, these are playlist controls, so I am not real sure.

I discovered some more updated symbols that VLC uses, which do the same thing as the above:

This website had some explanation of what VLC does when used as an audio player:

You can create your own playlists by selecting a song to start off with and then clicking ‘append’ (found in the drop down menu) on every song you want to add. In the same way that you can change the song order of albums you are able to do the same with your custom playlists. VLC will also remember the last playlist you created, so that you don’t have to keep selecting the songs every time. It also has the same extra features that the video player offers: change the playback speed, add a sleep timer and jump to a certain time in a track.

******

Another phone that I use as a music player has VLC 2.0.6 on it.

With this version of VLC, playing all songs in a folder makes more sense. Just find the song in the folder that you want to play, and choose "Play All" by selecting the three dots to the right of the song.